Wednesday, October 26, 2011

A New World Order: Occupy Yourself First.

Lots of high profile people have kicked the bucket this year, haven't they? It's like the globes social polarities are in flux. Ghaddafi's death, thinking about Libya and governance and the challenges facing African countries in the coming decade or so has got me all twisted up in political theory again. Don't laugh, but I have been wandering around Wikipedia's political portal in a kind of shopping spree. Picking an ideology has been even harder than choosing a political party* : libertarian socialism, or anarcho-communism? Does egalitarianism make my behind look fat? Does Civil Rights come in summer colors? How does one combine the absolute freedom of choice of the individual with social justice and the welfare and functioning of the collective? Quandary.

There is only one thing I am sure of, and that is that African citizens need to go active and keep claiming their rogue governments. Coming to an East African near you:

"There is no Peer Review Mechanism, Treaty or African Leadership Prize that can address this level of social organization, let alone influence it. Those schemes, perhaps they are effective but from the bottom looking up they reek of technocratic impersonality, removed from the sugar and salt of daily life. Tanzania, for example, is hardly new to the idea of peaceful presidential transitions: we're on our fourth administration and counting down towards the fifth when we may or may not flirt with changing parties. But even in this relatively stable environment it, is clear that there is deep crisis of faith brewing. We are looking for someone or something to believe in, and clearly the Big Man model is severely compromized in an age of increasing transparency, affluence and access."

One good read I have enjoyed on the Ghaddafi story is this sideways glance from Charles Onyango-Obbo talking about how the revolution will be Tweeted. Watching journalism cope with new media has been absolutely riveting. Heh.

And then, there is the Occupy movement. We have a local activist trying to get it off the ground in Dar es Salaam- as of last Friday I believe. The resounding silence has been... instructive. I threw a comment up on there, let's see if the blogsite is dead or alive. To readers who have been saying the revolution is necessary and just around the corner etc... what do you make of this? After all, Occupy is a global movement now. Can it work in Bongo? I'd say we need to Occupy ourselves long before it makes sense to Occupy anything else, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.